


Five things May teaches Alphonse and one thing he teaches himself.

by orphan_account



Series: Five glimpses into the mind and one into the heart. [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Prompt Fic, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 06:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Submerging himself in an entirely new culture, he swims against the flyaway current of Xing only to dissolve and lose his way, when he should learn to flow and then to become.</p><p>Fortunately, he has the most incredible teacher he could ask for, and then some.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five things May teaches Alphonse and one thing he teaches himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "hi hello could I request another 5 and 1 fic? maybe some almay this time? and please no angst again. please."
> 
> Special thanks to LP's FalconKnightCordelia for the usual. [tips hat]

On his first visit to Xing she guided him into a chamber wrought of diaphanous silk and gilded fastenings, to a multicoloured paradise that left his eyes watering and burnt the shades of the Fifty Clans into his retinas in a welcome relief from the rose pink imbuing the remainder of the Chang quarters of the imperial palace. The royal outfitters measured him in rapid motions far unlike any measurements an Amestrisian had ever taken, and by the end of the day a frail amaranth gossamer clung to his flesh to imprint the pink to his skin, and at once he noticed the political peace as fragile as a system comprised of fifty separately spinning tops on an unstable plank of parchment barely large enough to contain them even if still.

She taught him to see the disparity between Amestris and Xing, to melt himself into the pink to avoid drowning in the current.

 

On his second visit to Xing she rolled out a creamy length of paper, smoothing it and holding it down upon either side by a pair of ornate weights far heavier than they appeared to his untrained eye. Wielding a calligraphy brush like a sword against the demon horde of ignorance, she dipped the tip into a well of the dark, unknown cosmos and carved knowledge from the blankness of virgin white. He observed her, his fingers curled into his palms, his palms resting atop his knees, his knees bent and folded beneath him as he kneeled on a mat beside her, increasingly aware of the height difference between them and of the stares of the passersby at the rumoured new golden boy consort of the Princess.

She taught him to speak with his hands, to be fluent in a language of gestures and curves.

 

On his third visit to Xing she slipped her warm fingers into the palm of his hand and pressed grey-brown coarseness onto his form. A hat to cover the gold in his hair, a gentle reminder to keep his gaze down. In a bazaar sprawling the outskirts of Xijing, she screamed at a merchant until he worried it would come to blows, and then the two women laughed and smiled. She tied the bright pink scarf around his neck, her hands soft and her lips softer on the hollow of his throat, and took home another pink and two gold, the latter for the Emperor and _his_ consort. Then she indicated a stall of fresh fruit, offered him a coin of far less value than the designated price, and bid him try his hand.

She taught him to argue not only by logic but by loudness, to leave behind equations in favour of expressions.

 

On his fourth visit to Xing she seated herself on the other side of a tranquil pond illuminated with a black and white painting below the waters of the sigil he now recognised as yin and yang. Alkahestry, she explained silently, was not an alchemy dressed up in a _hanfu_ , but a method of communicating with the natural flow of life. They waited there for hours on end, warmed by the sun, surrounded by the sounds of birds and insects and susurrus of wind in leaves and grass, until he ceased to _wait_ and commenced, at last, to _be_.

She taught him to toss away mastering the universe and embrace flowing _with_ the universe, to close the pages of a world dissected into bared elements and open the leaves of life teeming with movement and growth.

 

On his fifth visit to Xing she taught him to kneel before an Empress, to bow his head in Her presence, to treat Her every word as law, and then over again she taught him the sensitive shell of her ear, the saltiness of her favourite breakfast, the warmth of her embrace beneath the sheets or the stars both.

 

She never taught him how to love her, how to love _her_ , how to see her a human and how to whisper with his touches all that which he could not say with his tongue. But these he found came naturally, because she _wasn’t_ a transmutation circle of carefully inscribed symbols and perfectly straight lines and Xerxian marked around the borders: She was alkahestry, an identical star gleaming in every transfer of the Pulse, always changing, always adapting to the situation, always remaining true to her original self.

But he could read the Pulse, could swim the Pulse, could _be_ the Pulse.

And when they _were_ one another, well, then they could teach one another everything.


End file.
